A Trip to a Winter Farmer’s Market

My favorite farmer’s market takes place on Tuesday and Friday mornings down in Zürich. I don’t get the chance to go very often because I’m usually working. I went for the first time last summer and fell in love with it. I was off all last week, so of course, I planned a trip to the market.

An endless variety of leafy things

As usual, they had beautiful vegetables.

Winter root vegetables

I was thrilled to find not one, but two varieties of kale. I came away with some dinosaur kale and some regular curly kale.

Dinosaur kale

They only have meat on Friday so that’s when I scheduled my shopping. I wanted to try out some new things and knew I’d be able get them there. We eat a lot of pork and beef, but I wanted to experiment with some wild game meat.

Cute little bunny butts

I came away with wild boar entrecote, rabbit legs, chicken livers and venison fillet. I am determined to find a way to like liver! I’ll be sharing recipes soon for venison in a delicious rich sauce and rabbit stew. The farmer at the stand was really helpful and gave me tips on how to cook my wild boar and venison.

Interesting game meats

Here’s a look at my haul from the market.

What I bought

Here’s a look at my gorgeous game meat. The total cost for the meat was 96 Swiss francs (about 100 US dollars).

8 Comments

Beautiful market! Wish they were that nice here. You are lucky to be able to buy game meats. In the U.S we have rules against that. You can’t sell venison and wild rabbit. Domestic is another story and it’s expensive as can be. I’d love to walk through that market there.

So true, Kate. It’s a great market and we can even buy raw milk and butter there which is against the law in the States. However, you all have Whole Foods! I love Whole Foods! And, you can get kale all year round and we can’t. It’s all terribly expensive here…my coconut oil costs several times what it costs in the States. The grass is always greener

I lived in Switzerland back in the ’60s, and I knew then that I would be more than happy to stay there forever. These markets are only one of the many wonderful aspects of life in la belle Suisse. I’m looking forward to your sharing more recipes!

Hi Stacy,
Yes, I did know that. However, that coconut oil is highly refined, it’s bleached (!) and it’s deodorized. Not really a good choice. The good stuff is very expensive and if people can’t afford it, I would suggest making ghee (it can withstand high heat cooking like coconut oil) and using olive oil for lower heat cooking and cold dressings. The cheap stuff is sadly cheap for a reason

I should also add that during the refining process, it’s partially hydrogenated (which leads to trans fats and those are bad). Now I’m off to google the Oerlikon market. I’m excited that it’s on a Saturday since I work during the week!!